Calixto

Carina Melisa Calixto

Professor Monterrey

English 5- 74

21 July 2021

My Theory of Writing

As this course progresses, we have been trying to use writing, discussion, and research

for discovery, intellectual curiosity, and personal academic growth. We have learned to work

together by sharing ideas, feedback, and revising each other's writings. The goal has been to be

aware of our thought process and our thinking and then applying it to our reading, writing, and

critical thinking. The basis of this course is to have an open minded. My writing is not perfect,

but I feel with this course I not only strengthen my writing, but I use effective writing techniques

to communicate in an academic and formal setting. While I reflect on the last two major

assignments, I can say I learned a lot of my writing. I learned new terminologies like rhetoric,

metacognition, and much more! As time goes by, I see my writing progress through all the work

like weekly journals, peer reviews, discussions boards, and conferences. As I write the last major

assignment for the ePortfolio I will focus on three main things. The first focus of this essay is a

reflection on what I have learned about writing. The second focus is writing about my growth as

a writer, reader, and critical thinker in this course. Thirdly, I will focus on answering the

following question: “How have I met the course goals for English 5?”, “Explain how you

achieved each one...use specific examples from your writing this semester”, and what you

believe writing means?”

To begin with, what are the four student learning outcome goals of this course? The first

one is “Developing Awareness of how communities shape reading writing and research”. For

example, in my research essay, I talked about childhood obesity and in one of my articles they

conducted a community based participatory research(CBPR) which is according to The Detroit

Urban Research Center (URC) defined as , “ A partnership approach to research the equitably

involves community members, organization representatives, and academic research in all aspect

of the research process enables all partners to contribute their expertise with share responsibility

and ownership; it enhances the understanding of a given phenomenon; and, it integrates the

knowledge gained with action to improve the health and well-being of community members,

such as through interventions and policy change. As a community they wanted to understand the

problem and how they can help improve the health and well-being in the community.

To continue, the second goal of the student learning outcome is “Explore a writer's

identity in relationship to the politics of language”. For say, in my Literacy Autobiography I

talked about how writing got me through the toughest times in my life and many would be like

how? Through language and writing I could communicate and express my ideas and feelings.

Growing up introverted I never really knew how to express myself, but journaling and reading

helped. me a lot. As I reflect on what I wrote on my literacy autobiography I noticed what made

me the writer I am today is my experiences and how I don’t let the bad things in my life bring me

down. On the contrary I think those bad things in my life have influenced me to share my story

so others in similar situations don’t have to feel lost. The writings I mentioned in my literacy

autobiography, I poured my soul into as there was a little crying into it. You may want to know

why? You may ask how can writing have so much impact on your life? That’s the thing writing

is expression and self-discovery. In every writing I do I put my experiences and when I write it, I
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can see how much I have been through and how much improvement I have made. I am happy to

be able to express myself now. I remember when I was younger, I could not speak a lot of

English. To see myself now I can say I am proud of myself. Lastly what I love about writing and

language is not matter the language you can communicate with loved ones far away through

writing.

In addition, the third goal to the student learning outcome is “Engage in reflective and

metacognitive processes”. In this course we have had self-assessment for the literacy

autobiography, we have had to revise each major writing assignment, have had to give a research

proposal, and much more! As I went by this course, I received a lot of good feedback from my

peers, and I have given them too. Something I love about peer review is that we do it out of

sincerity. As I look back to a peer review, I got on my first draft of literacy autobiography. The

peer reviewer had solid advice and questions about my writing. I think that really did help me

better explain some acronyms. For example, they had a question about what TBEAR is, and it

was my bad because I did not mention what it stands for. It stands for Topic, Background

information, Evidence, Analysis, and Restatement. In the future now I know to better explain to

the audience therefore they will not get confused.

Furthermore, the fourth goal to the student learning outcome is “compose rhetorically

effective texts, informally and formally, in a variety of mediums, or genres”. My strategies for

generating, drafting, revising, and editing is actually three to four off the top of my head. I have

implemented these techniques on all my writing during the course. The first one is when I

introduced a quote on my research paper. When I quote something, I introduce it with a single

phrase then I put quotation plus citation after that I explain the quote. For example, in my

Literacy autobiography I used this quote to get the attention of the audience: “I heard this quote
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that said, “You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or

because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life” by

Joanne Harris” I think it could of worked better if I did my quote adding like this: ‘ a sentence

with a colon: then the quote here’. Another technique I try to use in my writing is to summarize

my work I use a rhetorical precis. It is four to five sentences that has a claim, purpose, tone, bias,

and audience. It is very effective and consistent because it has the name of author, type of source,

major claim aka thesis statement, supporting claim, authors purpose, and more. As you can see it

is good, concise, and easy to understand. In addition to that my all-time favorite one is TBEAR

which stands for Topic, Background information, Evidence, Analysis, and Restatement. I think it

gets the work done short, simple, and consistent. I think all the techniques I have mentioned

control the ideas, summarize, analyze, evaluate, it can be used it draft or revise multiple times.

In conclusion, writing is important because it is an essential part of life. Writing at a

college level may seem intense and challenging but building English writing skills takes practice

and effort. You must have a lot of patience because we will not become excellent writers

overnight. I am still self-discovering many things and especially my writing. I will add on to my

theory of writing as I get older and wiser. The goal of this English 5 course named ‘Accelerated

Academic Literacies’ according to the course catalog description is “Intensive, semester-long

course to help students use reading, writing, discussion, and research for discovery, intellectual

curiosity, and personal academic growth - students will work in collaborative groups to share,

critique, and revise their reading and writing. Students will engage in reading and writing as

communal and diverse processes; read and write effectively in and beyond the university;

develop metacognitive understandings of their reading, writing, and thinking processes; and

understand that everyone develops and uses multiple discourses. “I think as a class we did that.
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With. A lot of hard work, dedication, ambition, and endless sleepless nights. With that being

said, I came knowing the basics of writing, the structure, and consistency of vocabulary, but now

as I learn more, I can see how much my writing has improved. I looked about at my diagnostic

writing, and it was very short now look at me writing two to four pages. That is insane! There are

some things I still need to work on like accepting feedback and criticism. I learned to be

comfortable in my writing, to discover new writing techniques, to be open minded, and to

manage time with work and school. I can use what I learned in this class in the future by always

being open to new ideas, thoughts, to write in an academic way. This class was intense, but very

interesting to communicate with other classmates who also are first-generation college students.

That is super cool to see! Overall, this course gave me a taste on what to expect for future

college classes. :p

Work cited

1. https://mysacstatemy.sharepoint.com/personal/carinacalixto_csus_edu/Documents

/Research%20Essay%20Draft%20-%20Copy.docx?web=1

2. https://mysacstatemy.sharepoint.com/personal/carinacalixto_csus_edu/Documents

/REVISED%20literacy%20Autobiography%20draft.docx?web=1